Skirmishes (27 page)

FORTY-THREE

COOP WATCHED THE SCREEN before him as nine imperial ships exploded. They didn’t explode into bits. They lit up and then essentially evaporated.

He nearly let out an unprofessional whoop of triumph. But he managed to contain it just in time.

Jason Xilvii didn’t screw around. Coop had said he wanted those ships destroyed, and Xilvii made sure the ships were destroyed, with no opportunity for retaliation.

Apparently, Lost Souls had more firepower than Coop had thought.

“Get Xilvii for me,” Coop told Kravchenko.

Kravchenko had a small smile on her face. Most of the bridge crew were smiling. Either they were relieved or felt as giddy as he did. Coop did his best to keep that feeling of victory under control.

Xilvii’s face, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, appeared on the screen in miniature.

“Excellent work,” Coop said. “You seeing any other potential problems?”

Xilvii tilted his head just a little. “Not yet, sir.”

That was the answer Coop wanted. “Keep an eye out. Set up a team to defend Lost Souls. We don’t know if this ended everything or if this is just the first round in a long series of battles. I’m putting you in charge of defense until I return.”

“Yes, sir,” Xilvii said. “Thank you, sir.”

Coop wasn’t certain if he could do that in Boss’s absence, but he just had. Let Ilona Blake contact him if she had a problem with it. He had just saved her life and her station, after all.

He signed off with Xilvii.

“Captain,” Anita said, “the imperial ships have uncloaked. They’re powering up weapons.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said. Sometimes he hated dealing with established militaries. They had protocol, and certain leaders followed it to the letter, even when doing so was damn dumb. “Get me Trekov, and this time, let me see her.”

When she appeared on the screen, she wasn’t the woman he remembered. Or rather, she was an older, scarred version of the woman he remembered.

Had he done this to her? Her mottled skin, her flat expression. The bone structure was the same, but her face had suffered damage that hadn’t healed well. He knew that this culture had the ability to enhance appearances, so he figured she had probably opted against some of the cosmetic fixes, maybe to remind herself of what had happened.

“Group Commander Trekov,” he said before she could speak. “I am Captain Jonathon Cooper of the
Ivoire
. You have invaded the sovereign space of the Nine Planets, and did not heed my warnings. Because of that, we destroyed your ships. Now, take the remainder of your ships away from our border, and let the Enterran Empire know that it cannot invade the Nine Planets again.”

“You’re in no place to negotiate, Captain Cooper,” she said. “The defensive systems of the Lost Souls Corporation may have had enough firepower to stop our ships, but your little armada there with its joke ships does not. You started a war with the empire at our first encounter four years ago, and we mean to continue that war. So consider this my warning: vacate the border or suffer the consequences.”

Coop sighed silently. He shook his head ever so slightly. “You’re amazingly intransigent, Commander. We have just destroyed nine of your ships. I am sending you a star map with new borders defined in red. We’re claiming additional territory in Empire space. I am now declaring that to be the border between the Nine Planets and the Empire. This puts your ships in Nine Planets’ territory. Since you’re in our territory, we will destroy you.”

“I’ve looked at your weapons systems, Captain,” she said. “You do not have the firepower that your space station had. I do not accept your terms.”

This time, he let her see how disgusted he was. “Have you truly forgotten our first encounter, Commander? I have a weapon that will take out your entire fleet. I did so with one shot four years ago. I can do so now. And if you fire upon the
Ivoire
, my colleague, Captain Lynda Rooney of the
Shadow,
will destroy you before you can order a second shot.”

Trekov’s skin had turned a sickly gray.

Coop had finally gotten to her, so he pressed on.

“Tell the Empire that our terms are simple: we have now moved the border to the coordinates I have just sent you. Any Empire ship that crosses that border will be destroyed. You are in our territory, and I am warning you. You have fifteen minutes before we destroy your entire fleet.”

She severed the connection.

Coop looked at Kravchenko. “Think she believes me this time?”

Kravchenko grinned. “I think she might, but you put her in a terrible position. What’s this about moving the border?”

Coop shrugged. “It seems like a good idea. The new coordinates are farther away from any inhabited areas and easier for the Nine Planets to defend. I had to give her something to let her salvage what she can of her reputation. She couldn’t just turn tail.”

“This isn’t salvaging anything,” Anita said. “You’re forcing her to give up territory.”

“And if she remembers what happened before, that’s not much. We just destroyed nine of her ships, for God’s sake,” Coop said. “You’d think she’d realize the position she’s in. She should take my deal and run with it.”

“What if it isn’t her choice?” Kravchenko asked.

“Then Kjersti will see some activity on back channels,” Coop said.

“I already am,” Perkins said.

“Let’s hope her commanders listen to her,” Coop said. “Or this time, she won’t survive.”

THE DIVE

NOW

FORTY-FOUR

MIKK WANTED US DIVING within a day. Yash thought it would take us a week. Somehow we have split the difference. We’re back in the skip three days later. I’d like to say we’re less nervous, more certain of ourselves, but I believe it’s the other way around.

Yash’s team has tweaked our suits to register things in real time and Boneyard time. All that study determined that by the time the dive was over, we had deviated .25 seconds from real time. Over a long dive, that time differential might add up—or it might stay the same.

We won’t be able to get more information without diving the Boneyard, and for once, Yash is more cautious than I am. She wants to dive without going near Ship One. I believe that if we’re going to dive in the Boneyard, we dive the ship. We may as well know the worst-case scenario.

That time differential is worst-case scenario for me in one way.
Something
is malfunctioning in that Boneyard, and given its impact on time, I’m going to guess that the something is an
anacapa
. I don’t know if the
anacapa
is inside Ship One, or if the
anacapa
is part of the Boneyard itself.

Or maybe things operate like they did in the Room of Lost Souls or on Vaycehn. Maybe the impact of the
anacapa
’s malfunction has had an impact far away from where the actual
anacapa
is.

No matter what’s causing it, our dive teams are now limited to the
Ivoire’s
crew and a handful of my people who have the marker. No one else, including some of our most experienced divers, can go anywhere near that Boneyard.

I am not losing anyone to that kind of carelessness ever again.

Yash has brought some of her engineering team. She’s staying on the skip and so is the team. But she wants more than one eye on everything that we send back in real time, and she wants some help, in case she needs to do two things at once.

Nyssa certainly can’t help her. Nyssa’s great with the medical stuff, but knows nothing about the
anacapa
.

She did compare my physical reactions inside the Boneyard to previous reactions on dives, and says there is a difference—I wasn’t imagining it. But, she also says that right now the difference isn’t dangerous. Or at least, that’s what she believes.

Still, she’s put a chip just under my skin. She’s done the same for every other member of the dive team, and she’s going to look at what we record on that, and compare it to the suit’s information.

That’s the best she can do.

With the other three members of the dive team on board, we’re pushing the skip to its weight and passenger capacity. Yash and I believe it’s necessary this one time.

We’ve made it inside the Boneyard. As we head toward the same spot we worked from before, the engineers from the
Ivoire
crowd the windows. The engineers haven’t seen the Boneyard from the inside.

I have to give them credit; they’re professionals. They don’t say much. But they do move slightly, point, elbow each other. One woman whose name I haven’t bothered to remember stands slightly to the side, her fist pushed against her mouth as if she’s physically holding back tears.

I can’t pay attention to the
Ivoire
crowd, even though they press too close to me. I hate having so many people on the skip, on a dive. I made Yash promise she’d be responsible for them, but that’s not quite enough for me emotionally. I need to block out their presence, their heightened tension, their worries.

I have to focus, or I can’t dive.

And on this dive, the entire dive team is going.

That’s the decision I made before we left. I’ve thought long and hard about the best way to do this dive. We could follow the procedures I had in place before—we could go for the scheduled forty minutes the rules require—but that might not get us inside the ship.

I want us inside the ship for a variety of reasons. The first reason is that I’m curious. We all are. But mostly I want to be inside that ship to check readings. We know how the time differential works outside the ship. If it changes at all
inside
that ship, then I don’t want us in there—or in there for very long.

I’m still trying to figure out how the differential is happening. Technically, those of us with the marker, and that includes Denby, shouldn’t be subject to problems with the
anacapa
.

I asked Yash about this, and she gave me a haunted look. She said, “If your assumption were really true, then we wouldn’t have had so much trouble in foldspace.”

I’m not sure she’s right about that either, but what her comment made me remember is this: At its core, no one understands the
anacapa
, the energy it produces, or where, exactly, it sends people.

I’d like to think I’m more cautious than I am. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t mess with this stuff if I didn’t understand it.

But the truth of the matter is that I began playing with
anacapa
s long before I knew what they were, and I’ve continued as I’ve realized that no one else understands them either.

If I were truly smart, I’d take this crew away from the Boneyard, lie to Coop, and tell him the place is undiveable.

But I’m not going to.

Because I’m hooked.

FORTY-FIVE

I GET THE SKIP to the exact point we’d been to before. Being around all of these silent Dignity Vessels startles me all over again. I both love and fear it here.

This time, Yash believes she’s compensated for the wobble, so we all watch carefully as I send out the line.

The line wobbles again, like it did on the last dive, but it hooks right near the door that we’re targeting on Ship One. Yash did compensate, then, and that makes me feel just a little less tense.

The team finishes putting on our diving suits. We normally change right in the skip, but with so many
Ivoire
crewmembers along, we decided—independently of each other—to get half dressed before we left.

All we have to do before our Boneyard dive is put on gloves and helmet-hoods and seal the suits. I press mine, listening to the seals lock in place—a sound added to the suit to ease the worries of the wearer. Then I feel a coolness as the suit’s environment activates.

Finally, the suit makes its little self-satisfied announcement that it’s ready to go.

I can do without an announcement, and someday I will tell our new suit designers to take that part out of my suit, in the very least. Other people can have it, but I’m not going to.

I turn toward the remaining members of my dive team to see how their suit assembly’s going. Orlando waits by the airlock, suit in place. Elaine pulls on her gloves, checking their tightness. Denby tugs on the center of his suit, loosening it just a little.

Nyssa has moved beside me. She’ll monitor the dive beside Yash. The rest of the crowd hovers in the back, trying to pretend they’re not interested or excited about anything that’s happening before them.

Yash nods at me. I sweep my gloved hands over the controls, a formal maneuver—at least for me—that helps me relinquish the skip. I’m more nervous than I want to be for this dive, so a bit of formality actually makes me feel better.

Then the four of us go to the airlock. We’d decided on an order before we left. I’m leading so that I set the pace, but Denby follows me. He’s going to get us inside that ship—at least I hope he will. Then Elaine follows, and Orlando brings up the rear.

I have given us one hour to open that door and get back to the skip.

We crowd into the airlock and head out. As my hands grip the line, I take a deep breath. I can feel my heart rate increase. I have butterflies in my stomach, but I can’t tell if they’re caused by nerves, excitement, or both.

Again, I look at the ships around me. For a brief moment, I turn down the communications link so I don’t hear any white noise at all. I turn on the exterior headset and listen to the sounds of the Boneyard.

I hear looping harmonies, soaring chords, and multiple voices. In the past, I’d retrained my hearing so that I recognized those sounds as the sound of malfunctioning tech, not as music. But out here it sounds like music again, primarily because of the sheer preponderance of it. I can’t even catch a thread of notes—there are too many. It’s like walking into a space port and trying to catch not only each voice in a crowd of thousands, but each word spoken.